Hath Majesty divine made itself known!
The sounds of heaven ye have heard; have seen
355 Its lightnings; have experienced its rains
Assiduous; its ires of winds and hail!
How often nights and days serene do make
Your seasons—God’s gifts—fruitful with fair yields!
Roses were vernal; the grain’s summer-tide
360 Failed not; the autumn variously poured
Its mellow fruits; the rugged winter brake
The olives, icy though they were: ’twas God
Who granted all, nor did His goodness fail.
At God earth trembled; on His voice the deep
365 Hung, and the rivers trembling fled and left
Sands dry; and every creature everywhere
Confesses God! Ye (miserable men!)
Have heaven’s Lord and earth’s denied; and oft
(Horrible!) have God’s heralds put to flight;
370 And rather slain the just with slaughter fell;
And, after crime, fraud ever hath in you
Inhered. Ye then shall reap the natural fruit
Of your iniquitous sowing. That God is
Ye know; yet are ye wont to laugh at Him.
375 Into deep darkness ye shall go of fire
And brimstone; doomed to suffer glowing ires
In torments just. God bids your bones descend
To penalty eternal; go beneath
The ardour of an endless raging hell;
380 Be urged, a seething mass, through rotant pools
Of flame; and into threatening flame He bids
The elements convert; and all heaven’s fire
Descend in clouds.
Then greedy Tartarus
With rapid fire enclosed is; and flame
385 Is fluctuant within with tempest waves;
And the whole earth her whirling embers blends!
There is a flamy furrow; teeth acute
Are turned to plough it, and for all the years
The fiery torrent will be armed: with force
390 Tartarean will the conflagrations gnash
Their teeth upon the world. There are they scorched
In seething tide with course precipitate;
Hence flee; thence back are borne in sharp career;
The savage flame’s ire meets them fugitive!
395 And now at length they own the penalty
Their own, the natural issue of their crime.